Let’s be clear from the outset: Language Line give me work, I do the work, and they pay me promptly at the agreed fee. This is excellent. Other agencies have fallen at one of these basic expectations and I am very grateful.
However, the booking and billing process is so hilariously arduous that I feel the need to document it.
The Job Offer email is from a No Reply account and all offers are at ONE HALF of the average fee level for my region. You have to click the link to the portal where the only options are to decline, or accept at that fee level. To make an offer you have to email a completely separate account with your bid. That account is not listed on the email.
The email is not from Language Line. It is from “squidgeit.com”
The list of jobs on that email puts the date and the time at the far right, so it scrolls out of sight. This is the first thing you need to see to know if you are available. Not Language Line’s bloody job number!
You have to go to the portal and decline every offered job, giving a reason, or it will keep being sent to you. You can’t just ignore jobs you can’t do. You can’t click the job to go to the job page and decline it.
There are no timesheets. The job page on the portal says there are, but they aren’t available until after the job ends. And that’s what it says. In practice they are not available at all. I’ve been sent a blank one to fill in every time. Every. Time. More on those timesheets later…
The portal job page is comprehensively full of info. The first box is a fairly pointless map of the journey from your base, which is fine but is the first place your finger or mouse goes when you want to actually read the job details and that just scrolls the map. Grr.
The next box details the fee as agreed. Nice to have that, but not entirely reassuring when the portal controlled by the agency is the only record of that fee agreement. Were there to be a dispute, it is nice to have something - an email or a jobsheet - that doesn’t have the potential to be changed later. I’m not saying Language Line have done or would do this, but it contributes to the vulnerability.
The info you need as an interpreter for the job is in three separate boxes on the page. “Appointment Details” does not include the address, for example. And “Address” does not include where or to whom to report. You might think to screenshot the page for reference but you can’t. I have a FIFTY INCH MONITOR but the job page formatting is such that you have to shrink the zoom level considerably to squeeze it onto a single window. Let’s big up Clarion: They send you a job sheet with everything you need on it, and the person signs and dates it. Job done.
The blank jobsheet. You have to physically write in your name, your interpreter number (ie their interpreter number for you), the job number, the language used, the venue, the location, the date, the booked start time, the actual start time, the booked duration, the actual end time, the actual duration, your signature, and your name (again). And the date. The unlucky person at the job has to write in their name, their position, their signature, their name (again), and the date. Bloody hell!
Then you bring it home, go to the job page, copy the start and end times into a web form for some reason and upload the sheet from which you just copied that information, and you’ve completed the job.
Except you haven’t because you have to wait to be alerted to the fact that you must go back to the portal to accept the payment for it.
When you are paid, and this may be only for interpreters who renegotiate the fee, the remittance includes THREE or FOUR entries for each job, including an entry for each hour or part hour, maybe something for “travel time” even if you don’t include that in your offer, and an “adjustment for minimum cost” to bring the total up to your fee. Presumably this is a fudge in the system to enable a different fee to be paid, and they do pay, but goodness it’s just another straw on the back of this camel.
Clarion, them again, email the details and ask if you can do it. You reply(!) to say “yes, it will cost this much” they reply to say yes or no and send you a job sheet with all the information on it and a place for you and the other party to sign. Then you knock it into their portal and job’s a good ‘un. I know some folk have issues with them too, but just as a comparison to the Kafkaesque Language Line…..
Sheesh.